Christopher Whiteside MBE is Conservative County Councillor for the Egremont North and St Bees Division of Cumbria County Council. The division includes St Bees, Bigrigg, Wood End, Moor Row, part of the Mirehouse area of Whitehaven, and surrounding countryside.
He is also deputy chair (political and campaigning) of the North-West region of the voluntary wing of the Conservative party.
Chris lives and works in Copeland with his wife and family.

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Martin Callanan was an MEP from 1999 until his defeat last week, and was the Chairman of the "European Conservative and Reformists" group in the European parliament which is the centre right group of pragmatic eurosceptic reformers which was set up when the British Conservatives (and most of the rest of those who joined the ECR) left the "European People's Party" (EPP).

The EPP is (still) the largest group in the European parliament: it is a grouping of centre right parties such as the German Christian Democrats. The British Conservatives were members of that group for many years but continued membership became increasingly untenable once the EPP started trying to do things like try to agree and impose a common manifesto and agree to support a common candidate for EU President. This is because most of the members of the EPP are Federalist, and the vast majority of Conservatives are now eurosceptic.

Martin Callanan is about the same vintage as myself, and I first met him when we were both involved in the late and unlamented Federation of Conservative Students. We didn't alwasy see eye to eye at the time but I respected and liked Martin, which is more than I can say for a lot of the people who were then active in national FCS.

His defeat in the North East election was not just the worst moment of last Sunday night for Conservatives - and the one moment a lot of us nearly lost our composure - but the worst moment of the night for intelligent Eurosceptics. But I am sure he will be back in some way, shape or form.

Paul Goodman at Conservative Home has been running "Callanan for Commissioner" articles and we could do an awful lot worse for Britain's next EU Commissioner.

Also on ConHome Martin has written a valedictory column about what Conservative MEPs have achieved during his 15 years in the European parliament. It's an excellent piece and here are a few extracts:

"Clearly, we have work to do if we are to show many voters that our values are their values; but I believe these values are an asset as we continue to rebuild our party in the north. Don’t let anyone say it is a Labour heartland. Labour’s metropolitan leadership take its support for granted, and we must never allow them to. We have some incredible talent in our party’s northern regions, and I will do all I can to support it as we take the fight to complacent Labour."

"Realistically, governing parties do badly at elections. People are not fully feeling the effects of the economic recovery in their pockets and wage packets. Against that backdrop, to almost beat the main opposition party is a fantastic achievement. "In 1999, we won the European elections by a landslide. We all know what happened in 2001. This result was not good for Labour. And for the Liberal Democrats, they proved that they are the Party of ‘IN’ – IN deep s**t. On a personal level, of course, there were some LibDems I got on better with than others (and some that I didn’t get on with at all), but I have some experience of what they must all be feeling. I wish them well with whatever they do in the future."I also share my sympathy with two sitting Conservative MEPs also not elected: Marina Yannakoudakis and Marta Andreasen. Marina saved UK businesses £2.5 billion in unrealistic maternity leave payments that the EU was trying to mandate. She has led a campaign against female genital mutilation, and opposed patronising EU plans for women quotas on company boards. "Since joining the Conservatives, Marta has worked tirelessly and deployed her vast experience on budgetary control issues, highlighting waste in EU spending. She was an excellent addition to the MEP team, and was making a major contribution to our work. I am sure that we have not heard the last of either of them."The European Parliament is frustrating, wasteful and often remote – but, increasingly, it matters"This might sound odd and even quite concerning, but decisions in the European Parliament arerarely made in the debating chamber, or even in the plenary votes. These days, they are usually made in what’s known as a trilogue – when a selection of MEPs, EU governments and the Commission come together to negotiate on details of specific laws. If you want to defend your interests – that is where it is done. Frankly, we are going to have to work even harder now that our numbers are depleted."Conservative MEPs really do work hard for Britain"Delivering in these trilogues usually means hours of preparation during the day, followed by hours of talks during the night. They often start these talks at seven or eight in the evening so that the prospect of an all-nighter focuses people’s minds. It’s not glamorous, but we have to do it. Conservative MEPs sit in that room and demand what they want. At 3am, they often get it. I’ve been proud to have been a member of that team of talented and dedicated people from across the UK, and all walks of life. I will miss my colleagues and friends, some of whom I might have fought with on occasion, but all of whom I have respected."In the ECR, we have been proud that we sometimes have different national interests and priorities. We don’t paper over them: we encourage them. As chairman, I have learnt a lot about the background and reasoning for these different interests. In doing so, I have made many friends from across the continent and beyond. "But let me also say that people from the ECR – and even many in other groups – also want to hear our national perspective on issues, and on the EU. "We are respected in the EU, and what always amazed me was how an MEP would make a great British-bashing speech in the chamber, only to come up to me afterwards and say,‘I wish we had the same guts as you and your Prime Minister.’ "As we start to talk about renegotiation and a major reform of how the EU does business, don’t always assume that everyone in Brussels is hostile. Going with the flow is too often an art-form there, and with the ECR we have started to show that the flow need not go in one direction. Others will be increasingly emboldened to call for something different."The ECR will continue to grow. It will continue to be more relevant. I’m so proud to have been a member and its chairman for the past thirty months, and I hope I can continue to help it expand."

The health service chief executive said there needed to be new models of care
built around smaller local hospitals.

The NHS said he was not suggesting the return of 50s-style cottage
hospitals.

In recent years the health service has emphasised the benefits of centralised
services. This has paid dividends in areas such as stroke care and major trauma where
significant benefits have been gained by concentrating specialist care.

But it has been seen as a question mark over the future of the many smaller district
general hospitals across the NHS such as West Cumberland Hospital.

In the interview in Friday's paper, Mr Stevens said they should play an
important part in providing care, especially for the growing number of older
patents who could be treated closer to home.

He said: "A number of other countries have found it possible to run viable
local hospitals serving smaller communities than sometimes we think are
sustainable in the NHS."Most of western Europe has hospitals which are able to serve their local
communities, without everything having to be centralised."

Mr Stephens said that elderly patients were increasingly ending up in hospital
unnecessarily because they had not been given care which could have kept them at
home.

Mr Stevens also told the Telegraph:

The NHS needs to abandon a fixation with "mass centralisation" and instead
invest in community services to care for the elderly

Waiting targets introduced by Labour became "an impediment to care" in too
many cases

The European Working Time Directive damaged health care in the NHS, making
it harder to keep small hospitals open

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Like most people who have more than a rudimentary knowledge of the workings of the legal system, I am an opponent of capital punishment.

It is just not possible to get a justice system which never makes mistakes. Therefore if you use the death penalty you will execute a certain number of innocent people. You will also have a certain number of guilty people acquitted, for whom the evidence of guilt would have been sufficiently overwhelming to constitute "proof beyond reasonable doubt" in the eyes of a jury if the consequence were a jail term, but not if it meant execution.

For that reason I would vote against any attempt to bring back the death penalty in the UK.

I also think it is reasonable to use diplomatic means to persuade other countries not to apply the death penalty where there are strong reasons to believe that it is likely to result in the execution of the innocent or to be applied where it is grossly disproportionate to any real or imagined offence - e.g. for rape victims, because of people's sexuality, or because they have changed religion or given an imagined offence to someone else's.

But we need to be very careful about trying to impose our views on other democratic countries about how they should treat people who have been convicted in a fair trial of truly horrific offences. It makes me extremely angry when other countries or institutions try to suggest that Britain should not have the right to impose "whole life" tariffs on criminals who were undoubtedly guiilty of revolting crimes, such as Rose West, who was told by the judge

"If account is taken of what I say, you will never be released."

I am sure the reaction of the vast majority of British people to any international body which tried to persuade the UK to overturn the whole life tariff on the murderers of Lee Rigby would be two words, and the second word would be "off."

In this country the fact that in the very worst cases life imprisonment really does mean life was part of the effective "deal" which persuaded most citizens to at least accept, not very enthusiastically in all cases, that we no longer execute even the worst criminals. But the anger which even relatively liberal Brits feel when outsiders, be it the ECHR or any other external body, criticises our right to impose whole life prison sentences on those who are genuinely guilty of unspeakable crimes should give us an idea of how many Americans feel when outsiders criticise them for retaining the death penalty.

I am disturbed to learn from this week's Time Magazine of evidence that European attempts to prevent the application of the death penalty appear to have contributed to the recent spate of botched executions in the United States of America.

Most of the US states which have the death penalty on their statute books have adopted lethal injection as their method of execution because as it was seen as more humane. There was a relatively standard procedure based on a protocl recommended by Doctor Jay Chapman, who had been Oklahoma's chief medical examiner, for using particular doses of certain drugs in sequence to first quickly sedate the person being executed, rendering him or her unconscious, and then stop the heart. Chapman himself said later that he had "no idea in my wildest flight of fancy" that every US state would adopt his protocol with no further research and that "I guess they just blindly followed it."

More recently there have been concerns that this protocol is not always succesful in making the execution painless, and there have been attempts to develop a better method. These, however, have fallen foul of EU or national legislation in Europe.

Many of the drug companies from which the American states used to buy the relevant drugs are headquartered in Europe - and in 2011 the European Commission tightened controls on the sale of drugs for use in executions. Ohio, which has a law requiring executions to be as quick and painless as possible, tried to replace the Shapman protocol with a single drug, the anesthetic sodium thiopental. but they were unable to obtain supplies for the drug, partly because the Italian government blocked the US-based drug company which had been manufacturing the drug, but ran into a problem at their Ilinois plamt, from using their Italian factory instead. This was the first in a number of cases where states which were seeking ways to apply the death penalty more humanely fell foul of European anti-execution policies. A number of such attempts failed because European institutions or governments blocked the sale or the relevant drugs to the US penal system.

This is by no means the only reason why there appears to have been problems in a number of recent executions in several US states with executions causing far more excruciating pain for the criminal than was intended. But it appears to be one of the contributory causes.

The debate has begun in some US states about whether to return to older methods of execution such as the firing squad or hanging. If I were a citizen of one of the US states concerned the evidence of problems with lethal injection would strengthen my opposition to continuing with capital punishment at all, but I'm not, and 63% or American adults disagree with me.

And I don't see how I can argue against their right to decide how the justice system in their country should work given that I believe that the UK has a similar right to decide whether we want British judges to have the power to impose whole-life prison sentences for those murderers for whom the judge considers this a just and fair sentence.

I fully understand why an individual, a company, or a state might wish to refuse to sell drugs for the purposes of putting human beings to death. I'm not even necessarily saying that they are wrong to do so, despite the problems described in the Time magazine article. But I think it is important that we understand the consequences of such actions. And in this instance the law of unintended consequences appears to have had a field day.

"A significant chunk of the electorate actually like the idea of coalition government, and want another one. Only four fifths of current Conservative voters say a Tory overall majority is their preferred result."That is obviously something to bear in mind if Conservatives are tempted over the next year to start setting out the kind of Tory utopia they could unleash if only they had Whitehall to themselves."

(Lord Ashcroft on his website and addressing Saturday's Conservative Home conference on the results of his recent extensive polling work.)

"We will have a catastrophe at the next election if we go on like this. Our voters are trying to give us one last chance and tell us they want change. He [Ed Miliband] has got to free himself from this or he will drag us down with him."(Labour MP and former minister Frank Field quoted in the The Daily Telegraph)."It's not just that they think he is weird. They think he's a joke and that's even more dangerous."

(Quote about Ed Miliband attributed by the press to a shadow cabinet member speaking 'Off the record')

Monday, May 26, 2014

Votes cast in this region in the European Elections last Thursday and declared at a little after midnight early this morning were as follows

Party

Votes

MEPs elected

An Independence from Europe

26,713

-

British National Party

32,826

-

Conservative

351,985

2

English Democrats

19,522

-

Green

123,075

-

Labour

594,163

3

Lib/Dem

105,487

-

No2EU

5,402

-

Pirate Party UK

8.597

-

Socialist Equality Party

5,067

-

UK Independence Party

481,932

3

I would like to congratulate all those who were elected, especially Jacqueline Foster and Sajjad Karim, the two re-elected Conservative MEPs, and thank all those who voted for myself and the team of Conservative candidates.

More signs of fratricidal warfare among the brothers and sisters today as members of the Labour party have been forming what one of them despairingly described as a "circular firing squad" and Ted Heath's quote above again very appropriate.

Even the Daily Mirror's Kevin Maguire, who is probably the most pro-Labour commentator to be found anywhere in the British MSM today, described Ed Miliband's campaign here as

"a calamitous own goal."

and added

"The uncomfortable truth for Miliband and Labour is he is a geeky Weird Ed. One of his Shadow Ministers under his breath calls him Forrest Gump."

Labour MP and former minister Frank Field has savaged Miliband in The Daily Telegraph and called on the Labour Leader to join David Cameron in supporting a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU. He told the Telegraph:"We will have a catastrophe at the next election if we go on like this. Our voters are trying to give us one last chance and tell us they want change. He [Ed Miliband] has got to free himself from this or he will drag us down with him."
The Daily Express reports how "Labour MPs attack 'Weird' Ed Miliband's disastrous poll strategy,"

and the Daily Mail reports here a further barrage of criticism of Ed Miliband from Labour or pro-Labour sources, with one Laour academic Lord Glasman, quoted as saying
"It pains me to say this; I have come to the conclusion that Labour is in danger of losing England."

The same article has a cartoon with two aliens getting out of a flying saucer and saying to a Labour MP - "Take us to your leader: We feel like a good laugh."

"There is still a year to go, and as I have found in the Ashcroft National Poll, only around half the electorate has definitely decided which party to vote for."It will be a battle, but remember this. If the Conservatives can switch one in six Labour voters – two thirds of those who say they’re willing to consider the party – this picture looks very different. Start with the ones who trust the Tories on the economy and prefer David Cameron as Prime Minister."(Lord Ashcroft on his website and addressing Saturday's Conservative Home conference on the results of his recent extensive polling work.)

"I asked those who voted in the Euro elections what issues would matter most in determining their vote next year. The economy came top, of course – but nearly as many people mentioned the NHS as immigration."It would be a mistake to try to re-fight this election and let last week’s issues dominate the debate for the next year."(Lord Ashcroft on his website and addressing yesterday's Conservative Home conference on the results of his recent extensive polling work.)

"Discipline under fire counts for a lot. The Labour results weren't that bad, but the party reacted as if they were ... the Tory results weren't that good, but the party reacted as if they were, largely holding the line and refusing to panic. That will inevitably colour this weeke'd coverage and debate."(James Kirkup writing in the Telegraph)

The council election results which we already have, and the european election votes which have been cast but will not be counted until Sunday evening, should not be ignored. That wold be arrogant. It is obvious that there is a lot of dissatisfaction on the part of many voters and we should listen to them, learn from them, and find constructive ways to respond to the concerns of worried or angry voters.

But Kirkup is undoubtedly right that the worst possible response is panic.

I have been looking through the local election results to see what happened yesterday to some of the excellent candidates I have been campaigning with.

South Lakeland DC

I was absolutely delighted to see that Kevin Lancaster won back the Sedbergh and Kirkby Lonsdale ward from the Lib/Dems. Kevin was an excellent advocate for the aera when he previously represented it as a councillor and I'm sure he will do a fine job again. Also pleased to see Caroline Airey re-elected in Mid Furness ward. Congratulations to Kevin, Caroline, and their teams.

Carlisle

All the Conservative seats which were up in Carlisle were successfully defended, and Dalston was a Conservative gain from Independent. Congratulations to Gareth Ellis who held Belah, Mike Mitchelson who held Brampton, Raynor Bloxham who held Longtown & Rockcliffe, Marilyn Bowman who held Stanwix Rurual and Liz Mallinson who held Stanwix Urban, Stephen Higgs in Wetherall and Ann McKerrell who gained Dalston. Commiserations to Christine Finlayson and Nigel Christian on excellent results which were just not quite enough in Yewdale and Belle Vue, and the other unsucessful candidates.

St Albans

At my former home at the other end of the country, I was delighted to see that Beric Read, a very good friend and colleague who was best man at my wedding, was re-elected in my old ward, Sandridge.

Congratulations to him and to the other successful Conservative candidates in the City and District, Terry Heritage in Harpenden South, Julian Daly in Harpenden West, Geoff Turner in Harpenden North and Mary Maynard in Harpenden East, to Victoria Mead in Redbourn, to Annie Brwster and Sandra Wood in Wheathampstead, Sue Featherstone and Dave Winstone in St Stephen's ward, Seema Kennedy in Marshalswick South, and Alun Davies in St Peters. Commiserations to Lyn Bolton who put up a good effort in Marshalswick North, Jim Vessey in Cunningham, and the others who didn't quite make it.

Sefton
In Sefton I was pleased to see David Barton hold Dukes ward and Denise Dufton hold Harington. Very disappointed that Jamie Halsall missed gaining Ainsdale by the tiniest of margins, polling 1,159 when the successful Lib/Dem scored 1,187. I know just how you felt, Jamie, I missed out on gaining a seat by 13 votes last year.

Also disappointed by that Sean Dorgan and Gemma Peace didn't manage to hold on in Blundellsands or Ravenmeols, and that excellent candidates Luke Thompson, Martin Barber and Adam Webster didn't get the gains they deserved in Cambridge, Manor, or Meols wards. Commiserations and better luck next year.

One might be very tempted to make a joke about the astonishing fact that 940 people actually voted UKIP in Cambridge ward, Sefton, but perhaps it would be better to avoid the risk that someone might quote it out of context. No serious candidate would want to risk being accused of saying that their political opponents should be executed. Whoever heard of a candidate doing such a thing?

Trafford.

A very good sign for the Conservatives was the successful defence of Trafford MBC. Labour really wanted to take that council, we really wanted to hold it. Congratulations to the Trafford Tories on a great result.

Pendle

And finally, congratulations to Lyle Davy, who at 18 has become Britain's youngest councillor by taking Coates ward from the Lib/Dems.

Friday, May 23, 2014

The table below comes from a tweet from the BBC with council gains and losses last night. It's a net picture so, for example, the figure of minus 78 for counservative councillors indicates that we have lost rather more than seventy-eight council seats but we have also gained some to take the overall change in councillors to that number. This was before any of the results which were counted this morning were declared.

The first thing which needs to be honestly recognised is there is obviously a backlash from many voters against all the established parties including the Conservatives. A lot of people are sending a message to the main Westminister parties that they are not happy with us. Well, I get the messsage, and I'm pretty sure that most of my Conservative colleagues do.

There is no getting away from the fact that it was a good night for UKIP, and all the more surprising given the sort of fortnight they've just had. But not good enough to be within light-years of the support they would need to form a government or even win a large number of parliamentary seats.

Having said all that, I am giving an honest opinion and not just spinning when say that this was not that bad a night for the Conservatives and must have been a disappointing one for Labour.

For a party in government to win council seats in excess of 80% of the number it was defending four years after a good result and one year out from a general election, and be that close to the number of councillors elected by the main opposition, is not a disastrous result.

We've lost many good councillors last night, and will lose more today, but our vote share is up on last year and we have had good results in many places such as Birmingham, Kingston-upon Thames where we gained control of the council, and Swindon (where I think all politicians will have to memorise the name of the Labour opposition leader Jim Grant, and of David Rennard, still the Conservative leader of the council with an increased majority.)

Labour did not make the sort of gains that an opposition looking to go into government in a year's time would normally expect to make.

There is a very interesting analysis of how vote shares have been moving by Steve Fisher of Trinity College Oxford which you can read here.

There is everything to play for in 2015.

We could still see anything from an outright Cameron win (a landslide is not on the cards but a win is possible) to a Miliband win (a landslide is looking increasingly unlikely but in theory he could sneak in with a third of the vote) and very different shades of hung parliament in between.

Copeland council will have a directly elected mayor instead of a council leader as the campaign for change scored a convincing win, by a margin of well over two to one, in the referendum which was held at the same time as the European Parliament elections.

12,671 votes were cast for the option of an elected mayor as compared with only 5,489 for the status quo.

Congratulations to Carla Arrighi and her team on a convincing victory in a hard-fought campaign.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

The polls are now closing in the European and local elections and the Mayoral referendum in Copeland.

I am heading down to the verification for the European election and count for the Copeland Referendum, having been on the go for about fifteen hours (since 5am this morning, with two short breaks.)

I have been very proud to be part of the 2014 Conservative European campaign team in the North West, in which we have fought a positive campaign and for which so many people have worked so hard. I do not know how well we wil do but I do know that every seat we win has been richly deserved in terms of hard work.

There are also signs that the mayoral vote in Copeland has produced a higher than usual turnout in the borough and inspired considerable interest from local residents. Whether it is the pro- or anti- mayor supporters coming out to vote, or as I suspect perhaps a bit of both, it is a thoroughly good thing that more people are taking an interest.

Let us hope, whichever system is in place, that this carries over into more interest in the Copeland elections next May.

Because of a one hour gap between blogger time (apparently GMT) and BST, this post may appear to have gone up at 4pm but it is actually 5pm. Which means, if you have not already done so, five hours to vote in the European and in some areas local council elections which close at 10pm.

Almost everyone who has lived in a coutry where they have been deprived of the vote realises just how much that right to vote means.

It is your right to use your vote however you wish, including by abstaining. But you will not hurt politicians by declining to use your vote today. You will, however, lose the opportunity to use that vote for whichever party is closest to your own views.

"In retrospect I can see the language I used and ideas I alluded to may be perceived as rather strong."(UKIP candidate Gordon Ferguson, who is standing in the Cambridge ward in Southport, on the letter he sent to voters accusing the Labour, Conservative and Lib/Dem parties of treason, suggesting they should be executed for it, and warning voters that if they support those parties they were also guilty of treason. His defence was that he has not had media training.)

These elections are going to be incredibly close - and your vote could make all the difference.So please make sure a trip to the polling booth is part of your plans for tomorrow - and remember to tell all your friends too.Thank you,

·The Conservative Party
supports an open, innovative and safe internet, promoting growth and freedom of expression, where
legitimate business can thrive and citizens can express their culture and
develop their creativity.

We are clear that human rights apply online, as well
as off line. The UK is an active supporter of multi-stakeholder governance of
the internet and we welcome Tim Berners-Lee’s recent initiative of a dialogue
about the web we want.

·The UK government has responded
to the European Commission’s consultation on EU copyright rules. Its response takes account
of a 2013 public call for views on copyright in Europe and representations from
stakeholders on the consultation itself. The UK response stresses the
importance of copyright, the UK’s desire to see a robust, flexible and modern
copyright framework, and the need for any proposals to be grounded in good
evidence.

·It is only the Conservatives
that have a credible plan to reshape Britain’s relationship with the European
Union, and to put this to the British people in an in-out referendum by the end
of 2017.

·Britain needs people in Brussels who will
stand up for our national interest. We understand and share people’s concerns about the European Union. The
EU is not working for Britain – it must change.

·Our businesses value the single market but
they find the degree of European interference excessive. People are worried that Britain is being
sucked into a United States of Europe; that may be what some others want, but
it is not for us.

·They see decisions being taken far away,
rather than by their elected representatives in Parliament. And they worry that European rules have
allowed people to claim benefits without ever working here. As a result,
democratic consent for Britain’s membership has worn wafer thin.

We
are fighting to renegotiate Britain’srelationship with the EU. Some
areas for renegotiation that we have already set out are:

·Keeping our border controls
and cracking down on benefit tourism. We want to see free movement to take up work, not
free benefits. We support the continued enlargement of the EU to new members
but think that new mechanisms should be put in place to prevent vast migrations
across the Continent.

·Securing more trade but not
an ‘ever closer union’. We want businesses liberated from red tape and benefiting
from the strength of the EU’s own market – the biggest and wealthiest on the
planet – to open up greater free trade with North America and Asia, but the
concept of ‘ever closer union’, enshrined in the treaty, may appeal to some
countries, but it is not right for Britain, and we must ensure we are no longer
subject to it.

·Taking back control of
justice and home affairs. Our police forces and justice systems should be able to
protect British citizens, unencumbered by unnecessary interference from the
European institutions, including the ECHR.

·Powers flowing away from
Brussels, not always to it. Power must be able to flow back to member states, not just
away from them. This was promised by European leaders a decade ago at a meeting
in Laeken, but the promise has never really been fulfilled. We need to
implement this principle properly.

·National parliaments need to
be able to work together to block unwanted European legislation.We need to ensure powers can
flow back to national parliaments. We will look at ways to make this happen,
including the possibility of giving national parliaments a ‘red card’.

·Conservatives will secure a
better deal for British taxpayers. And then we will give the British people the final
decision on Britain’s membership of the European Union at an in-out referendum
by the end of 2017.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

"No, I know that Jim is doing a good job for Swindon and I think he is doing a good job as leader of the council."

(Ed Miliband)

"But he is not leader of the council is he Mr Miliband? It’s a Conservative led council."

(Ben Prater, BBC Journalist)

From Ed Miliband's radio interview on BBC Wiltshire today, to which you can listen below by clicking on the red loudspeaker button. To me what made this damaging was not the fact that Miliband forgot the name of the local Labour leader, which was embarrassing but is the sort of mistake anyone can make. It's the fact that he tried to bluff it out and pretend that he understood the first thing about local Swindon politics when he clearly didn't.

Monday, May 19, 2014

Health is a national competence ad we do not think it would be in the interests of patients to see decisions in this area move to the EU.

Conservative policy on Health and Nursing is as follows:

·Having
sufficient numbers of well-trained nurses is of course critical to providing
the compassionate care that patients deserve.

·Although the government
has taken difficult decisions on the deficit it has been able to protect the
NHS budget,
allowing the NHS to employ record numbers of nurses.

·Increasing nurse numbers in our NHS. There are more nurses in our NHS than ever under Labour meaning patients
get the care they deserve. According to the latest statistics there
are 313,302 nurses, midwives and health visitors – 2,509 more than in May 2010
– meaning families can have peace of mind that their loved ones will be taken
care of properly.

·Reducing the
number of NHS managers. The government is also working to reduce the
numbers of managers in the NHS, so that more money goes to the frontline. There
are now over 7,400 fewer managers and senior managers in the NHS than under the
previous government.

·Ensuring safe
staffing levels.
To ensure safe staff numbers are maintained, the government has introduced the
display of ward level staffing and the reporting of the numbers of staff on
wards once a month. Furthermore boards will need to publicly examine and
explain staffing levels. One of the new Chief Inspector of Hospitals’ roles
will be to take action if hospitals are found to be compromising patient care
by not having the right number of staff on wards.

·These measures
will support the NHS to deliver a health service that provides the long-term
security that patients and their families deserve.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

·The UK has some
of the best wind resource in Europe. The UK has 20 offshore windfarms
(including the 4 largest farms in the world) and a 3308MW capacity.

·Since the first
UK offshore wind farm was built over a decade ago, offshore wind has evolved to
become a large-scale commercial renewable technology with an
important role to play in the government’s long term plan for a balanced low
carbon electricity generation portfolio to help meet our 2050 carbon targets.

·The UK has
supported the development of a sustainable offshore wind industry and recognises
the large scale investment and commercial opportunities which this industry
presents.

·We want to see
UK-based businesses grow to create a centre of engineering excellence that
delivers cost reduction for UK projects and exports to overseas markets.

Hat tip to Tyron Wilson (@TyronWilson) on Twitter for this graphic comparing the percentage of prisoners from the Romanian community with the percentage of UKIP Members of the European Parliament who went to prison ...

It isn't quite a like for like comparison: a closer one would be with the percentage of Romanians in the UK who are in prison which he says is 0.44%.

During the last general election my UKIP opponent, Edward Caley-Knowles told a hustings debate organised by Churches Together in Keswick that the late Ted Heath should have been hanged for treason.

In the area where I will be campaigning tomorrow afternoon, it would appear that some other Kippers want to extend that to all members of the Conservative, Lib/Dem and Labour parties, and possibly anyone who votes for them.

I will be delighted to campaign tomorrow in Southport with local Conservative council candidates.

All over Twitter this afternoon is a letter from one of their UKIP opposite numbers who apparently wrote that the Conservaties, Lib/Dems and Labour have, quote,

"conspired with a foreign power, the EU"

and are "all thereby guilty of treason"

and that those responsible for that treason "should be hung by the neck until dead."

They also threatened voters that

"If you vote for any of the three Lib Lab Con parties you will be aiding and abetting them and will also be guilty by association of treason."
Fortunately for the majority of the electorate but to their own disappointment, Southport UKIP do not expect to succeed in seeing the 78% of those who voted at the last election who backed one of those parties "brought to justice" because "Our senior police, crown prosecution service and judges are almost exclusively freemasons and Britain's courts have been utterly corrupt for many years."

Saturday, May 17, 2014

I took part in a debate on BBC Radio Manchester last Thursday at 9am in which one of the issues raised was the EU accounts.

It was suggested by the UKIP representative that the EU has not even filed accounts for many years, which is nonsense as they have indeed produced and filed accounts, while the Lib/Dem representative said that the accounts had been signed off but the Court of Auditors had raised concerns about how national governments spend money. This is true as far as it goes but gives an incomplete impression of the scale of the problem which the auditors have repeatedly found with the European Union's accounts.

The truth is that for the past nineteen years the EU accounts have been signed off but qualified by the Court of Auditors who expressed serious concerns. They have indeed found issues with how EU money has been spent by member governments, and those governments do need to sharpen up their act, but that is not the only problem the auditors found and the EU institutions are certainly not off the hook.

I realise that for many people other than those who are fanatical about Europe, saying "Please read the audit report on the EU accounts" sounds about as attractive as "please stick your hand in a tank of Piranha fish."

However, in my opinion the introduction to the most recent report on the accounts by the President of the Court of Auditors is not that hard to uderstand, nor written in incredibly boring language, and if you take a quick look at the report here, just reading the President's introduction will make you one of the hundredth of a percent of the British electorate who understand the truth well enough to understand what is really going on.

You will then be able to recognise if you hear a candidate trying to fool you, whether it's a kipper or other Eurosceptic trying to suggest there are no accounts filed at all or a Europhile trying to pretend there are no problems with how the EU handles money. Which there most certainly are.

The most recent report of the European Court of Auditors has found that the EU failed to properly account for nearly £6 billion in 2012, of which British taxpayers' proportionate share is £832 million.

They found that 4.8 per cent of the EU’s £117 billion budget in 2012 - £5.7 billion - was spent in “error”, on projects that were either tainted by fraud or ineligible for grants under Brussels’ rules.

By "error" the auditors do not necessarily mean that the whole of this money went on fraud or waste, but they do quite explicitly say that it should not have been spent because it was not properly justified under the relevant legislation and rules.

This so-called ‘error rate’ in Brussels spending was up from 3.9 per cent the previous year, according to the auditors. It means that for the 19th year in a row, the European Court of Auditors have refused to give the EU’s accounts a clean bill of health.

EU bureaucrats were accused of “shambolic” mismanagement when the report was published, with Conservative MEPs suggesting it appeared as though Brussels thought it had a licence to 'Carry on Squandering’.

The EU spending watchdog found that supervision and control of Brussels spending was, quote, only

“partially effective in ensuring the legality and regularity of payments."
and that "All policy groups covering operational expenditure are materially affected by error,”